The Pianist by Tony Kitt

Władysław Szpilman in Warsaw

Music grows on wave crests.

When the sails of sound are at half-mast,

music breaks up into pebbles.

Each soloist is a finger dialling

death’s number.

Only the nameless dwell in the heart

of non-being. I am hiding

in a finger store; I am groping

for my invisibility visa.

My body is staccato suppressing legato;

each breath, a flageolet of defiance.

Strung together with my hollowness, I yearn

for the warmth of the imaginable.

Who is out there

skimming every syllable of existence?

The night, all bricked up…

The seeds of future flames

underneath the ideology crust –

for a life span; maybe

more than one life span…

Tony Kitt

Tony Kitt is a poet from Dublin, Ireland. His family hails from the West of Ireland, as well as from Italy and Greece. He has worked as a researcher, a music critic, a literary translator, a creative writing tutor, and a magazine editor.

His poetry titles include Endurable Infinity (University of Pittsburgh Press, USA, 2022), Sky Sailing (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2024), and A Quiet Life in Psychopatria (MadHat Press, USA, 2024). His chapbook called The Magic Phlute was published by SurVision Books (Ireland) in 2019
His poems appear in multiple magazines and anthologies, including Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Daily, The North, Cyphers, The Cafe Review, Plume, Matter, The Fortnightly Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The New Ulster, Under the Radar,etc. They have also been translated into Italian, Greek, Romanian, German, Ukrainian, Albanian, and Chinese.

He edited the Contemporary Tangential Surrealist Poetry anthology (SurVision Books, 2023), as well as the anthology entitled Invasion: Ukrainian Poems about the War (SurVision Books, 2022), and was the winner of the Maria Edgeworth Poetry Prize.